Flexible Leadership for Uncertain Times-A Three Part Blog Series

Welcome to guest blogger Dick Hissam, Tatum’s National Managing Partner. He has written about this topic for Directors & Boards magazine and spoke regarding this topic at a recent Inc. magazine Leadership conference.

Management guru and longtime GE CEO Jack Welch once said, “When the rate of changes outside the company exceeds the rate of change inside the company, the end is near.” This observation has never been truer than this year.

At your organization’s birth, it probably had a more limited scope than it does today. Focusing on the service or product that buyers wanted was how the company became successful. As companies grow they spend an increasing amount of focus on building and improving infrastructure like IT, HR and other support services.

At some point on the growth curve it becomes challenging to maintain high standards across many operational functions while still focusing on core competencies that drive growth. At this point, seeking outside help becomes an attractive option. So when should you outsource services? The answer is not black and white – it continues to evolve.

Today, it’s generally accepted that organizations use a mix of internal and external services across operations, but in our era of sustained uncertainty there is an emerging trend: flexible leadership capacity. Simply stated, flexible leadership is bringing in operating executives on an as-needed basis to take on targeted management initiatives without incurring permanent overhead. Flex staffing has reached the corner offices.

Are you passively “deciding” to in-source something you shouldn’t?
If outsourcing at the top of the organization seems radical, remember the words of Jack Welch cited above: outsourcing offers a way to remain nimble in a high-risk, rapidly changing business environment. For many years outsourcing has provided a way to minimize resources devoted to non-core activities. At higher levels the benefits are different. Flexibility can help you complete an important initiative that you would otherwise lack either the capacity or technical expertise to handle. It can also help you accelerate progress toward strategic goals by “flexing up” for a limited time.

Not unlike medicine, deciding to manage every aspect of the business with internal resources has potential side effects. Executive management can take their eye off the most important activities when they take on “one more project” if they already have reached their maximum capacity. This can increase the risk of executive turnover and eroded quality of work. You must accept certain constraints on leadership capacity and the inability to dramatically accelerate progress because of those constraints. Outsourcing to the right flexible leadership can mitigate these risks.

Join us tomorrow for part 2 of this series.